This summer, the City of Edmonton will install 18 km of on-street bicycle routes. The project is all part of a larger plan to create an integrated bicycle network, as envisioned in the City’s Bicycle Transportation Plan.

As part of this 2011 program, bicycle lanes and sharrows will be provided along 76 Avenue (Gateway Boulevard to Saskatchewan Drive), 106 Street (51 Avenue to Saskatchewan Drive), Saddleback Road and 97 Street (34 Avenue to 83 Avenue).

Bicycle lanes are marked lanes that separate the bicycle right-of-way from motor vehicle traffic and parking. They are separated by solid white lines, and marked with an image of a bicycle and a white diamond.

Sharrows are pavement markings consisting of an image of a bicycle, capped by a pair of arrows indicating a shared use lane. The sharrows guide cyclists on the road, and remind drivers to expect cyclists in the travel lane.

Installing these new bicycle routes will encourage cycling, which is an inexpensive, healthy and environmentally friendly mode of transportation.

On June 4, the project team will share the details of these bicycle routes with residents. An information kiosk will be installed at the Southgate Centre. Residents will have the opportunity to review the routes in more detail and ask questions to City staff.

Miriam Bard-Dumont provides communications support for Transportation Planning. For the past three years, sheâ��s been getting the word out about future projects such as bike lanes, roads and LRT lines. Her role is to make it easy for people to get informed and involved in projects that will shape our City.

This is a nice start, but there is still lots of work to be done in #yeg for cyclists!

I think that there are more and more cyclists on #yeg roads every year and that is great to see, but every spring it’s still like drivers forget about us and have little to no concern for our safety… to be fair, there are plenty of cyclists out on Edmonton city streets who either choose not to obey ‘road rules’ or simply are unaware of the rules that apply to them as well!

So while I think it is great that there are a few KMs of bike share lanes in the city, education is important as well. How do we get the message across to drivers that cyclists are not on the roads to annoy them or disrupt traffic flow, but because we are getting places too and being enviro-friendly while we do it?

I think that if the city did more to support cyclists, more people (drivers) would be aware that cycling in Edmonton is happening and the drivers just need to get used to it!

Are there any current municipal campaigns promoting cyclist safety and raising driver awareness?

Andrew

8 years ago

The bike sharrows are a total waste of tax payers money. I live around 38 Ave where some of them were painted on last year. Most of them 1/4 to 1/2 of them have flaked off.

Michael Kalmanovitch

8 years ago

Hello,
Great that this is finally being done. Little late but keep going. More is needed and the sooner the better. Please impliment the full Bicycle Transportation Plan. A fully integrated bicycle bicycling system will envourage more people to cycle and make it safer for everyone.
I use 97th street from 82nd avenue and 46th avenue a couple of days a week and the though I like the street south of Argyll since it has so much space and the road surface is good. North of Aryll this stretch is very poor road surface quality and the road is narrow – not inviting to inexperienced cyclists. If you are going to make a route it needs to meet certain minimum level of quality and specifications. Presently their are sections on the street that don’t.
Also DO NOT put in the type of road infrastructure that was done on 96th street between 82 avenue nad Argyll. This is a poor roadway for cyclist.

Michael Kalmanovitch

8 years ago

Oh – and I have not noticed any road surface sharrows and such on these routes yet.

David Lloyd

8 years ago

I’m very excited to see that Edmonton is creating more infrastructure to support cycling on city streets. I’m a year-round bike commuter, and the streets are definitely the fastest way to get around Edmonton by bike. Thanks for these markings; please continue to add more infrastructure to keep making street cycling more and more attractive, safe, and easy in Edmonton.

Justin

8 years ago

I am pleased to see some progress on this, and look forward to more.

I would like to echo Michael’s comment above, that certain standards of roadway upkeep are needed to encourage cyclists to actually utilize the dedicated lanes and sharrows routes. These standards are much different than for cars, since a small pothole for a car can be a quite big – and dangerous – one for a cyclist.

Even just typical road maintenance needs are different. For example, the dedicated bike lane that runs on 88th avenue, between 109th and 110th streets, is still filled with debris leftover from the winter, and also shoddily patched by pothole crews. Both of these factors make it more difficult to navigate the actual designated lane, and encourage cyclists to put themselves and others at risk by cycling outside of the bike line, in what is a one-way street in the opposite direction. This is not the kind of cycling behaviour we want to encourage, and the way to prevent this is by reducing barriers and impediments to safe cycling.

Additionally, I would like to see street-side traffic light buttons adjacent to the new bikelanes (as can be seen at this website: http://www.sa.gov.au/subject/Transport,+travel+and+motoring/Cycling/Traffic+light+tips+for+cyclists ) installed at major intersections. These will allow cyclists to cross busy intersections safely, and without having to dismount in order to press a pedestrian signal and cross the street on foot. Alternatively there could be in-ground metal detectors in the lanes which would influence traffic signals.

Let’s ensure that we are looking to other, more bikeable cities to truly make these initiatives, and all further cycling infrastructure, fully accessible and useful to new and established Edmonton cyclists.

We need to maintain what we little we have, just as we do other roads.

The 127th street bikeway is a good example – the surface is becoming rough enough that cyclists are forced to avoid it in some sections, so it’s no longer as useful a route as it once was. 102nd Av downtown and to the west is also getting unrideable/

It’s important that the core be maintained for the system to flourish. Glad we have it, and don’t want to loose the value we’ve spent building it.

Roberta

8 years ago

I second the call for better upkeep, and also question how to improve education for cyclists and motorists. CanBike is a fantastic course but few people are interested in making the time commitment to learn. We need society-wide agreement on how cyclists and motorists should behave. Even good drivers often don’t understand why cyclists are on the road, changing lanes or taking certain lane positions, because they have no “feel” for safe cycling. And untrained cyclists make decisions based on what feels safe – like riding on the sidewalk, or riding the wrong way (saw a guy on 109 St. this week – that was terrifying). We need an ongoing dialogue about how to cycle and how to behave around cyclists – more than just “stop at the stop signs and get out of my way”.

Marion

8 years ago

City-wide education is a must. I find myself constantly explaining to my friends who are drivers why the cyclist is doing certain things, or why the car needs to move over more when passing the bike. And then I have to explain to other cyclists why they really did need to stop at that intersection and yield to the car.

People understand that if they jaywalk, they could get a ticket. I don’t see the same awareness about consequences for bikes breaking the laws (except on Whyte Ave sidewalks during the summer).

ninjawitch

8 years ago

great beginning but if you want to keep up with the times you will implement the full Bicycle Transportation Plan sooner than later.